Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA (Capital Ships thread Mk. II)

A few more tidbits from the Death Star Novel?

First, so much for the Super-class designation.
Tenn muses that he would enjoy being stationed on one of the, ?four new Super-class Star Destroyers,? and that those vessels were ?currently being built.? His understanding that each one was ?eight or ten times the size of an Imperial-class ship,? is relatively meaningless.

Tenn knew that these new vessels were being produced at Kuat Drive Yards, and this is as easily explained as Tenn being exposed to the public rendition of a Super-class vessel, as he apparently cannot name any of the prospective ships he would like to be assigned to, and could just as easily be the same four Executor-class Star Dreadnoughts we already know about as they could be four brand new 12.8 to 16 Kilometer Super-class vessels.

Also, given that Tenn describes Imperial-class vessels as ?over a kilometer and a half,? he is not being technically exact to begin with.

Second, the Hypermatter Reactor of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer Mark II
Interesting classification of the next generation Star Destroyer, and its appearance in a shakedown cruise during the Death Star period.

Also, apparently a hypermatter reactor contains enough energy to reduce an entire Star Destroyer to ?wisps of ionized gas in a microsecond.?

In short?that would be a lot of power generation.

Third, Death Star Beam mechanics and reactor power
The Death Star hypermatter reactor generates an energy ?equivalent to the total weekly output of several main-sequence stars.?

At full power the Death Star?s hypermatter reactor is capable of providing a ?superluminal ?boost,?? which amazingly enough causes, ?much of the planet?s mass to be immediately shifted into hyperspace.¨

The strange ring effect we see is a ¨planar ring of efflux energy-the ?shadow? of a hyperspace ripple.?

In short, the Death Star beam actually accelerates a large portion of the planetary mass into hyperspace at maximum power...

 

Can't we just designate "Star Destroyer" to be a family of ships rather than a destroyer in the traditional naval sense? In that case an SSD is just a really big Star Destroyer and we can continue calling it the Executor-class. Even canon sources will never be perfect.

 

What four Executor-class ships?

Can you find me a single reference that indicates four 19km Executor-class ships, rather than citing Executor as one of four 8km Super-class ships?

1.6km >1.5km. What's wrong with that?

Is it explicit that the destructive effect is caused purely by conversion-of-energy under real-world physical rules?

See below...

What, exactly is ?equivalent to the total weekly output of several main-sequence stars?? Maximum reactor output in a single second of standard operation? A single superlaser strike? Something else?

And how, exactly, does the Death Star create the ?superluminal ?boost?? that causes ?much of the planet?s mass to be immediately shifted into hyperspace¨...? Presumably this is to do with the beam, rather than merely the reactor.

I wasn't aware that energy alone could accelerate anything past lightspeed.

The most interesting thing here is that the VFX element popularly known as the "praxis ring" (after the moon of the Klingon homeworld where it was first observed ) is now connected to this shift into hyperspace.

This implies that what we see when a superlaser is fired or a Death Star main reactor blows up, is an uncontrolled jump to lightspeed by large chunks of Alderaan or the battlemoon.

This is also where we get back to Star Destroyers: all other things being equal, a hypermatter reactor explosion aboard an ISD would destroy it in broadly the same way. Not by simple conversion of energy, but by creating an interaction with hyperspace.

(The lack of any evidence for a "praxis ring" with exploding ships isn't a problem: we have observable, G-canon examples of superlaser destruction of smaller ships - Liberty, for instance - with no visible "praxis ring".)

In short, while I'm not denying that there may be massive energy outputs involved, I'm curious to know exactly what the novel says in these instances.

In the quotes you gave (as opposed to the glosses you contextualized them with) I can see nothing that proves that the destruction is due to actual power generation, rather than the creation of a hyperspace connection...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

And how, exactly, does the Death Star create the ?superluminal ?boost?? that causes ?much of the planet?s mass to be immediately shifted into hyperspace¨...? Presumably this is to do with the beam, rather than merely the reactor.

On what basis do you say "presumably to do with the beam"? You appear to have none aside from your predetermined conclusion, suffice to say the relevant quote is explicit that it is the reactor that provides the boost (on what possible basis the beam could do anything of the sort is a matter known only to you, suffice to say that the quote says exactly what you presume it doesn't).

"At full charge, the hyper-matter reactor provided a superluminal "boost" that caused much of the planet's mass to be shifted immediately into hyperspace."

Simple, really.

 

I can merely demonstrate that Executor and these vessels have never once been differentiated as separate classes, and once again remind you of the most salient retcon, that being the initial statement that all members of Executor?s class are, in fact, 19-kilometer long Star Dreadnoughts and that the first four Super Star Destroyers produced by Kuat have always been identified as being members of Executor?s class?

Actually, no.
The hyperspace interaction with the Death Star is a product of numerously greater orders of magnitude of power (somewhere around 1e33 Joules) and only occurs at full charge.

It took no more than an instant. Tenn knew that the beam's total destructive power was much bigger than matter-energy conversion limited to realspace. At full charge, the hyper-matter reactor provided a superluminal "boost" that caused much of the planet's mass to be shifted immediately into hyperspacec. As a result, Alderaan exploded into a fiery ball of eye-smiting light almost instantaneously, and a planar ring of energy-reflux - the "shadow" of a hyperspatial ripple - spread rapidly outward.

The hypermatter reactor, which is explained as a ?null-point? device, that is the conversion of tachyons into useable energy, has a real-space limit according to this novel, which would appear to be roughly 1e33 J. (The maximum energy burst actually produced by the reactor.) Once the reactor reached this full-charge then it produced the ?superluminal boost? which accelerates portions of Alderann into hyperspace.

Considering that Sarli indicated that jumping a vessel the size of a Venator to hyperspace took a full-hours worth of power generation (in the VnSD?s case ~1e28J) this superluminal boost elicited by the Death Star must be immense.

Large amounts of Alderann?s mass are accelerated into hyperspace - We get a hyperspace shadow ripple
The Death Star was at full power when it detonated ? We get a hyperspace shadow ripple
Death Star II detonates at full power - We get a hyperspace shadow ripple

We do not get ripples, which indicates nothing has been thrown into hyperspace, when the Death Star Superlaser is set to a lower power, such as the vaporization of capital ships.

It seems to take immense power, roughly on the order of 1e33 J (that would be equivalent of 77 thousand Venstars at full power for one hour) to illicit this hyperspace interaction.

Which finally tells us why the Death Star was such a problem to build?it actually is a new technology. (Finally)

As for the destruction of the Imperial-II?the only hyperspace interaction we get with smaller hypermatter reactors is the conversion of tachyonic hypermatter into energy?the matter to energy conversion process is reinforced by the Death Star novel?and actually stated to be nearly a limitless ?null-point energy? source?.

His nephew, Hora Graneet, had been a navy spacer on the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Mark II class vessel, which had been selected for a shakedown cruise testing one of the improved prototype hypermatter reactors. Tenn didn't know the specifics of what had happened, and didn't have anything close to the math needed to understand it anyway. He knew that hypermatter existed only in hyperspace, that it was composed of tachyonic particles, and that charged tachyons, when constrained by the lower dimensions of realspace, produced near-limitless energy. How this "null-point energy" had become unstable he didn't know. He only knew it had been powerful enough to turn an ISD-2 and its crew of thirty-seven th

 

I was presuming that the beam, the "prime weapon", is what blows up the planet, rather than the straightforward effect of a large hypermatter reactor in operation....

Not really, no: taking this quote in context, the previous sentence shows that what's blowing up Alderaan here is "the beam's total destructive power".

Which means that I was right to differentiate the operation of the weapon from the straightforward, simple operation of the reactor: "Presumably this is to do with the beam, rather than merely the reactor"

This doesn't mean that the reactor is "mere" compared to the beam; nor did I deny that the reactor powers the beam.

I was just sceptical about the idea that merely running the reactor causing large chunks of nearby planets to make uncontrolled lightspeed jumps.

I think that's a reasonable scepticism, especially in light of the full quote.

I'll discuss the quote more fully in my reply to IceHawk.

This isn't the clincher that you think it is.

1.) Executor is stated to be one of four 8km Super-class ships.

2.) Executor is stated to have been misreported as a Super-class ship to hide her true size.

3.) Executor and "all Super Star Destroyers of the same class" are stated to be 19km (for the purposes of the RPG).

There's no proof here that the other Super-class ships were really 19km. The question of what's meant by "the same class" with Executor is problematic, since we know that she isn't realy a Super-class ship.

So we turn to other evidence for clarification... which repeatedly cites 8km as the length of Super-class ships, including Lusankya, the ship built at Kuat as Executor.

 

Poor wording on my part.
Obviously hyperdrives are capable of accelerating an object into hyperspace, and the power required was established to be somewhere around 1.3e28 J for an object the size of a Venator, and requiring a hyperdrive.

The Death Star superlaser is the only device we?ve seen capable of doing so with an object without a hyperdrive, which given both the power constraints of hyperdrive usage and the uniqueness of the Death Star effect, points to an immensely advanced system.

In the first instance you have reworked the chronology of the retcons, as well as cherry-picked them.

1) Executor is stated to be the progenitor of a new Super Star Destroyer line, the 8-Kilometer Super-class, of which four vessels are being completed shortly after the Battle of Yavin. (Later Executor is stated to be the progenitor of a new 12.8-Kilometer Super-class line, of which four are stated to be near completion?)
2) Executor, and ?all Super Star Destroyers of her class,? (hitherto Super-class in the canon), are actually 19-Kilometers long
3) A fake budget request titled, Super-class Star Destroyer, is presented to the senate, under which the funding for the Executor, and apparently the first generation of Super Star Destroyers are built. Later the Executor, the first operational vessel, has its class name changed to Executor-class Star Dreadnought.

Nowhere is Executor?s status as the first of four identical class-line ships removed, and as a piece of canon standing with no retcon, Executor still is the flagship vessel of this new class line, previously known as Super-class.

Were Super-class vessels created? We would have to know which one first?

And as for your vaunted Lusankya example?she is stated to be ?nearly identical,? a ?sister ship,? and is given technical details exactly matching the historiographical representation of Executor at the time?not to mention Lusankya is stated to be both ten times the size of an ImpStar and exactly 12-Kilometers long by at least two other sources, and larger and more powerful than the Viscount.



I'll see if I can track down the exact Death Star quotes later today so we can pull apart the whole hypermatter idea....

 

Sure?

Death Star destruction is the only SW phenomenon where we know the destructive effect is caused by throwing stuff into hyperspace; that doesn't mean that it is the only instance where that happens.

We know that reactor explosions alone can also create "praxis ring" effects, showing that they're creating similar, destructive hyperspace reactions.

I see no reason why this isn't a property of hypermatter reactors generally.

After all, we're told that Star Destroyer/battlemoon reactors produce energy through making hypermatter interact with reaspace, and that if this becomes "unstable", an ISD-II can be destroyed completely.

Nor are these limited to large ships: the TIE reactor is long-established as the same type.

I wasn't dealing with a specific chronology of retcons, but rather with discrete items of canon.

That's where all the references to 8km SSDs come in.

The argument hinges on the phrase "all Super Star Destroyers of the same class". What does this mean? How do we define "the same class"?

The references to a four-ship group are intrinsically bound up with the Super-class designation and the 8km length. So does the retcon of Ex's length apply to the other ships?

IMHO, the evidence weighs against it: the four-SSD group is associated with the 8km length; repeated statements indicate 8km size for most SSDs, and then there's parsimony: it's less intrusive to retcon just one ship's length.

This is all out-of-context interpretation, presented rhetorically to support your argument.

I'm not sure where "nearly identical" comes from. Feel free to supply details?

But:

a.) the "sister ship" reference comes from an insane ci

 

The chronological progression of the retcons are of principle importance.
Executor was still canonically a member of the Super class-line when the initial Sarli retcon was issued.

As I say, yet again, Executor has never been separated from being progenitor of a new class line in the canon.

Perhaps you did not notice the NEGTV&V, as Executor shifted to 12.8-Kilometers so did every member of its canonical-class, including the other members of the first four-ship launch. The data from the NEGTV&V reinforced Executor?s status as progenitor of the new Super Star Destroyer line, regardless of exact length-statements. (In fact, in the presence of a length-varying retcon.)

Whether at 8-Kilometers or 12.8-Kilometers Executor is still the prototypical Super Star Destroyer, the first of four by 1 ABY.

And the Super-class is not ?intrinsically bound,? to the 8-Kilometer length anymore than it is bound to the 12 and 12.8 kilometer lengths also attributed to it.

Again, the 8-Kilometer length was immaterial according to NEGTV&V, the four Super Star Destroyer group is associated with Executor in every single canonical source.

On at least three occasions the Super-class length is stated differently, 8-Kilometers, 12-Kilometers, and 12.8-Kilometers. (and now somewhere between 12.8 and 16 Kilometers)

Yet the status of Executor as the benchmark always remains.

And parsimony?
You have yet to explain how severing the reinforced progenitor of a new class line from its legacy is more frugal than simply redressing a technical detail derived from a decades? old, acknowledged, canon mistake.

Or how the secret prison ship that was buried whole could serve as a public fakery which is no longer needed?.the Senate is dissolved by this point and the Rebels have engaged the Star Dreadnought already.

Who is Lusankya fooling?

Was it Kuat? To hide the existence of Lusankya herself? (secret prison that doesn?t exist and all that?)

That would not work, Kuat would likely notice an 11-Kilometer discrepancy in their first Executor and the Guardian or Annihilator.

How do we explain that?

Short-term memory loss brought about by a Palpatine force rub on the entirety of Kuat perhaps?

Wait, perhaps Kuat only built the Super-class ships and was never the wiser about Fondor producing a superior 19-Kilometer version?

Cory Herndon
One of the New Republic's precious few Super Star Destroyers, the Lusankya has a bizarre and storied history. The massive vessel ? equal in almost every way to Darth Vader's flagship Executor -- was built under a code name at the Kuat Drive Yards. Once completed, the Emperor himself used the dark side of the Force to hide the Lusankya beneath the surface of Coruscant's cityscape.

That particular piece of canon is self-explanatory?unless you are going to argue being a third the size and having a fifth of the firepower could be considered equal in almost every way to a Star Dreadnought.


Okay?Death Star?.

Actually, there is no direct interaction with hyperspac

 

WotC has a new feature that I'm sure Fleet Junkies will enjoy: Messages to Spacers, "a new regular column that brings you new starships and space stations from throughout the Star Wars universe."

This week we have background on the XQ2 space station.

 

Perhaps they are slowly leading us up to the release of the new Starships of the Galaxy? Hopefully any ships/stations they include in this new section will not be in the new SOTG. Frees up space for new stuff.

--Adm. Nick

 

Speaking of which... y'all hear that we're getting a new SSB set next year?

 

No. No official confirmation, either, just the assurances of one of the WotC guys that they're (almost) definitely doing it. I expect we won't hear anything specific for awhile.

 

Personally, I like the joke idea about the Super-class I came up with a while ago (but cannot find the original post anymore)--

Sate Pestage tells Palpatine that the builders of the Executor misread the blueprints and constructed it way too small, at 8km. Palpatine does the "how could anyone be so stupid" forehead-slap, then tells Pestage to name it "something really dumb, like the...the Super," then force the head builder to captain the ship (whether he wants to or not) as his punishment. Then Palpatine also orders for the new 8km class to keep being built even while they resume work on the Executor-class so he can use the similar ships to confuse Rebels and political enemies.

 

But nor has the number of genuine ships in her class been canonically established: "all Super Star Destroyers of the same class" does not define what that class is.

As I said already: The argument hinges on the phrase "all Super Star Destroyers of the same class". What does this mean? How do we define "the same class"?

The third retcon esatblishes that the 8km exists at least on paper, and there's now an added reference to a real 12km SSD "prototype".

The question then is what we do with all the narrative references to 8km SSDs. Do retcon all of them ALL, and give the Empire a relatively large number of 19km superships, or do we retain them at 8km, as a real class to which Ex was said to belong?

I see no compelling reason to retcon the size of any ship except Executor.

The NEGtVV is an "in-universe" text that repeats a widely-disseminated statement about Executor being the first of four Super-class Star Destroyers, but introduces a claim that all these ships were 12.8km long, rather than the 8km of earlier sources.

We KNOW that a flat length of 12.8km is wrong, as Ex was in reality 19km; but we know that the Byss prototype was ~12km. We also have numerous descriptive references to individual SSDs at 8km.

We obviously have to explain some statements, specifically those claiming Ex at a length other than 19km, or arguing for a flat length for all SSDs at 8km or 12km; but I see no need to retcon the stated length of any specific ship EXCEPT Executor.

Thus leaving all the others at 8km.

We know there's an error in any statement claiming Ex as the benchmark of an 8km or 12km SSD class. We also know that she was claimed "in-universe" to be smaller than she really was.

The question is: what was the "reality"?

Were all the other ones really 19km too - which would mean that all the specific sizes stated when they appear in narrative are wrong?

Or was it just Executor's size that was misreported, by connecting her with a REAL class of 8km Star Destroyers?

Statements identifying Ex as lead ship of a class of 8km or 12km SSDs require retconning, based on her movie size. This retcon has bee

 

Son of a...

[image=http://www.wizards.com/global/images/starwars_article_Mesop1_pic2_en.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/e/ee/Platform2-XWA.jpg]
[image=http://www.wizards.com/global/images/starwars_article_Mesop1_pic1_en.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/7/7c/Platform1-XWA.jpg]

I'm... strangely flattered that WotC appreciates my screenshot skills. Too bad they did a crappy job removing the black background. I'd have fixed it for them if they had asked.

 

Wait, you argue that game engines are reliable to scale the Vengeance at 8 Km in BoP despite cutscene and box art scaling it closer to the 19Km Executor, but Annihilator, which is identical to Executor in the game, and is not seen to be distinct from the Executor class in any way is suspect?

Intimidator is stated as an Executor class ship. It is also visually represented with the exact same type of vessel (the same model even)

 

I just found this picture at wookieepedia. The ship docked to the lower arm of the space station looks familiar to a Broadside-class.

Any thoughts?

 

Nice find! I think its probably intended to be the same class as the Demolisher, since the space inbetween the mandibles appears to be a hangar, there are notches on the sides, and the "stairstep" pattern of the superstructure is nearly identical to the Demolisher.

 

I agree, seems to be a Demolisher.

Also, is that an ISD there? Because Lianna is the homeworld of SFS.

 

Still an Imperial world, and as the HQ of SFS, one well worth guarding.

 

From the way it looks the ship is being build there or at least undergoing repairs.

 

It's not unusual for ships to be worked on at their port of call, especially if that port is as well equipped as Lianna.